XFS was a default choice for many years in the company when I arrived here. Some of the reasons are very good handling of big files (important for DB servers for example), fast recovery and possibility of online resize (ext3 was not able to do this at the time).

But there are some downsides as well. For example XFS is very prone to fragmentation so from time time defragmentation is necessary (although this can be done online). Also it is not a “standard” filesystem, so many backup solutions do not work with XFS (although they support reiserfs, blah!). We are having a big problem finding good online system backup solution for our servers. I would be grateful for recommendations! :-)

Can you explain the benefits of using XFS in your situation ? I’m just curious, there are so many filesystems around that it is sometimes complex to pick a choice !

Thanks in advance

Stéphane